What Wine Goes With Shrimp?

Albariño or Chablis for most versions; a dry rosé if there is chilli or smoke. High acid, no oak, no tannin.

Prawns — shrimp, on the other side of the Atlantic — are mild, faintly sweet and take on whatever they are cooked with. Garlic butter, chilli, lemon, coconut, smoke: the shellfish is the constant and the treatment is the variable, so the pairing follows the pan rather than the animal.

Two fixed rules

First, no tannin. Shellfish carry iodine compounds that react with tannin to produce a distinctly metallic taste. This is one of the few pairing warnings that holds up chemically rather than being a matter of preference, and it applies whatever the sauce.

Second, high acidity. Prawns are almost always served with something sharp — lemon, lime, tomato, vinegar in a cocktail sauce — and a wine less acidic than the plate tastes flabby. That is convenient, because the same wines that avoid tannin also tend to have the acidity.

By treatment

Garlic butter, or scampi. Chablis or a Muscadet — the acidity cuts the butter and the lack of oak means the garlic has nothing to turn bitter.

Grilled or barbecued. Char and smoke want a wine with more fruit: Albariño, or a dry rosado.

Chilli, or a spicy stir-fry. Off-dry Riesling — sugar damps the heat, low alcohol avoids amplifying it.

Coconut curry. Gewürztraminer or a fuller Riesling, for the richness as well as the spice.

Prawn cocktail. The sauce is sweet and sharp at once, so an off-dry white or a Cava with a little dosage.

The shell matters more than you would think

Prawns cooked in the shell, or with the heads on, taste considerably more of the sea — the shells carry most of the iodine and much of the flavour. That intensity suits a more saline, mineral wine: Albariño or Assyrtiko rather than a soft one.

Peeled and mild, they are gentler and a rounder white works.

And if the prawns are part of a paella or a jambalaya, pair with the rice dish rather than the shellfish — the saffron or the cayenne is louder than the prawns.